Finance and Management Committee
July 14, 2026
AGENDA REPORT
TO: Elizabeth Lake FROM: Monica Elise Davis
Acting City Administrator Deputy City Administrator
SUBJECT: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
One-Year Update
DATE: July 2, 2026
City Administrator Approval Date:
RECOMMENDATION
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report From The City Administrator On The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan One-Year Update.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Despite a rapidly evolving financial and operational landscape, the City remains committed to nurturing a thriving, equitable, and resilient community. City departments rely on a shared foundation of processes and procedures that impact the cost and quality of service delivery. The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan (“Strategic Plan”) provides a framework for the City to systemically examine and improve this shared organizational infrastructure.
This report provides the City Council with a one-year update on the implementation of the Strategic Plan across the plan’s five strategic priorities: streamlining operations; fostering cross- departmental collaboration; enhancing communication and coordination; optimizing workforce management; and aligning the City budget with citywide priorities. An interdepartmental staff workgroup is shepherding implementation for each of these priorities. Some of these workgroups are already demonstrating tangible results- standardizing community engagement procedures across departments, piloting a budget evaluation tool with four departments, and fostering stronger interdepartmental connections. Other workgroups are still deep in the research phase- examining bottlenecks in the City’s procurement process, exploring how the City can better nurture internal talent, and scoping opportunities for the City to better communicate its work. While the City continues to face significant financial constraints, these implementation efforts will together enhance the City’s institutional capacity and improve service delivery for Oakland residents.
Betsy Lake (Jun 29, 2026 12:37:06 PDT)
Jun 29, 2026
Elizabeth Lake, Acting City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan One-Year Update Date: July 2, 2026 Page 2
Finance and Management Committee
July 14, 2026
BACKGROUND / LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
In March 2024, the City initiated a strategic planning process to develop a citywide strategic plan responsive to Oakland’s fiscal conditions, operational challenges, and long-term service goals. The strategic planning process was designed to balance the City’s fiscal recovery efforts with core service delivery and equity objectives.
The initial phase of the process focused on establishing a shared framework for long-term improvement. Through this work, City leadership identified five strategic priorities to improve service delivery and institutional capacity. These priorities focus on improving operational efficiency, strengthening cross-departmental collaboration, enhancing internal communication, optimizing workforce systems, and aligning budget decisions with citywide priorities and equity goals. To support this process, the Strategic Plan established cross-departmental implementation teams aligned to each priority area. The City Council received an initial informational report on the Strategic Plan on April 14, 2025.
On January 27, 2026, the Finance and Management Committee received an initial six-month update on the implementation of the Strategic Plan. In that update, representatives from each of the five workgroups presented their initial efforts. Staff reported that they spent the first six months of implementation scoping their implementation efforts and conducting key background research.
ANALYSIS AND POLICY ALTERNATIVES
At the one-year mark, implementation of the FY 2025–2028 Citywide Strategic Plan reflects steady progress consistent with a multi-year organizational change effort. Key updates from each workgroup are as follows:
1. The streamlining operations workgroup is deep in key stakeholder research. This workgroup is currently mapping bottlenecks in the procurement process and supporting ongoing efforts to modernize related procedures. This work will help the City improve the cost and speed of procurement efforts.
2. The foster cross-departmental collaboration workgroup has identified community and digital engagement leads in multiple departments and is working with these leads to standardize public-facing engagement processes. This work will improve the reach of the City’s public-facing engagement efforts.
3. The enhance communication and coordination workgroup is pursuing several avenues to strengthen internal City communication. This workgroup is close to launching a new internal city newsletter with key updates on city activities. This work will contribute to a shared sense of purpose and help City staff serve as ambassadors for the City in their day-to-day lives.
4. The optimize workforce management workgroup is exploring improvements to the City’s Human Resources processes and is examining usage of the City’s intranet website. This work will support more efficient hiring processes and help new staff access the key information they need on city procedures.
5. The align budget with city-wide priorities workgroup has developed and piloted a new budget evaluation tool with four departments (Department of Transportation, Department of Violence Prevention, Information Technology Department, and the Fire Department).
Elizabeth Lake, Acting City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan One-Year Update Date: July 2, 2026 Page 3
Finance and Management Committee
July 14, 2026
This tool will ultimately help departments better evaluate the impact of their efforts and reprioritize resources to the most effective uses.
Detailed information on implementation progress by strategic priority, including one-year status updates, key focus areas, and cross-departmental coordination efforts, is provided in Attachment A.
RELATED PLANNING EFFORTS
This report on the implementation of the City’s FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan aligns with several other strategic planning efforts. By improving the efficiency and impact of city operations, the Citywide Strategic Plan advances the objectives of the Oakland Roadmap to Financial Health. Continued implementation of the Housing and Community Development Department’s 2023-2027 Capital Investment Strategic Action Plan, Citywide General Plan, and the Economic Development Action Plan 2025-2029 are all components of the Citywide Strategic Plan.
FISCAL IMPACT
No fiscal impacts are associated with the production of this informational report. The implementation of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan will support the efficient use of the City’s fiscal resources and ongoing alignment of City spending with core service and equity priorities.
PUBLIC OUTREACH / INTEREST
No public outreach was conducted in preparing this information report beyond the standard City Council noticing procedure.
COORDINATION
A comprehensive review of existing planning documents developed across the City was completed as part of the development of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan. The Community Engagement Working Group and the Department Leads for the Departmental Racial Equity Team were consulted in the development of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan. Additionally, the internal Steering Committee and Agency Directors also provided feedback on the one year progress of this plan.
RACE AND EQUITY
The Department of Race & Equity played a key role the development of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan leverages prior research on disparities in Oakland and seeks to equip departments with tools to better address these disparities. All proposed changes to City procedures are subjected to appropriate equity analysis before enactment.
Elizabeth Lake, Acting City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan One-Year Update Date: July 2, 2026 Page 4
Finance and Management Committee
July 14, 2026
ACTION REQUESTED OF THE CITY COUNCIL
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report From The City Administrator On The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan One-Year Update.
For questions regarding this report, please contact Monica Elise Davis, Deputy City Administrator, at 510-238-7985.
Respectfully submitted,
Monica Elise Davis
Deputy City Administrator
Prepared by:
Caleb Smith, Senior Advisor
Housing & Community Development
Department
Attachments (1):
A: One-Year Status Update on FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan